‘Call me and we can buy love together’

Photographs of subway graffiti unveil a heart of darkness

CALLICOON, NY — Callicoon Fine Arts will open its first solo exhibition on Sunday, September 6 with a show of artworks by Glen Fogel. An opening reception will be held at the gallery on Sunday from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. The show will run through October 24.

The exhibition will be comprised of two bodies of new work. The first work, titled “Call me and we can buy love together,” consists of over 100 numbered photographs taken with a cell-phone camera in New York City subways over the past two years. Grouped selections from the larger series will be exhibited. The photographs depict closely cropped faces in advertisements that have been the site of various forms of graffiti. The images, though sometimes humorous, are illustrative of a persistent homophobia, racism, sexism and violence. They exhibit both a reaction to and a complicity in the spectacle of capitalism and its advertising apparatus.

The second work is titled “Glen from Colorado,” inspired by Fogel’s period as an experimental filmmaker. The installation features elements including a fluorescent sculpture spelling out the name GLEN, an audio speaker directed at the light on one side and a chair positioned at the light source’s other side. A sound component consists of 45 minutes of excerpts from over 20 years of intimate letters written to the artist.

Fogel is completing the MFA program at Bard’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He has had solo exhibitions at The Kitchen and Momenta Art. His work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial and in group exhibitions and film screenings at The Museum of Modern Art, Artists Space, and numerous other galleries and film festivals in Europe and the United States. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

The gallery is located at 27 Lower Main Street, upstairs. For more information email info@callicoonfinearts.com or call 845-887-4202.